The Wedding Cake (The Wedding Series) (11 page)

Papa Legba,

Open for us the Gate

That we may return.

When we return

We shall give thanks

To the Loa. Abobo!

Voudoun (Voodoo) chant

Nothing in this world is single;

All things by a law devine in each other’s being mingle.

“Love’s Philosophy”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

One

All Hallow’s Eve, 1855

Belle Maison, Louisiana

D
eath hovered, just out of reach, like a lover. A lover I longed to embrace. I waited, impatient as the hours and humid-laden days of autumn droned by.

Age had brittled my bones and grayed my hair. But it was disappointment that hardened my heart. A life wasted that made me give up the fight with nary a complaint.

“Ye didn’t eat any of that soup? Is I gonna have to take up feedin’ ye again like ye was a babe in arms?”

I closed my eyes but couldn’t escape the sound of Mammy, her hickory wood cane clomping on the polished oak floorboards as she entered the bedroom. And countless years had taught me the old Negro woman was impossible to ignore.

“I had Cook make it up special for ye, ’cause I knowed how you liked it,” Mammy muttered as she yanked open the heavy brocade drapes.

“Don’t open the window.” I was Eugenie de Valliers, sole owner of Belle Maison, and my words should be obeyed. But they seemed to fall on deaf ears as the subtle scent of rose gentians wafted across the sash. I turned my face away from the light invading my sanctuary. Nothing had changed. I had no desire to see the world outside this room. The moss-drenched oaks and the black-watered bayous beyond the sugar fields held no appeal.

My lips firmly shut, I resisted the heavily scrolled silver spoon lifted by the frail, dark hand. Mammy’s hand trembled and drops of fragrant chicken broth splattered on the shawl wrapped around my shoulders. I came close to relenting as my faded blue eyes met the black ones staring at me hopefully above the spoon. A bite wouldn’t hurt, would it? But I only shook my head slowly and watched disappointment shadow the wrinkled face of my servant.

Nay, friend. Mammy had been my companion for more years than I could remember. My only friend and companion since my father, the last of the de Valliers family other than myself, passed away some twenty years ago.

Had it been that long? The dreary days had melded, one with another into years and decades. My sigh made Mammy glance around as she lifted the silver tray that seemed to stoop her aged body even more.

“Starvin’ yourself to death ain’t gonna accomplish nothin’, ye know.” Mammy set the tray on the chest of drawers. The mellowed silver service, a gift from Louis XIV to the de Valliers, shone in the dying rays of the sun slanting through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“I told you I’m not hungry.”

“And ye haven’t been for weeks now.”

I settled into the cushions of a chair Mammy forced me to sit in, feeling every ache in every joint of my body. “I’m an old woman and want nothing more than to be left in peace. I think I deserve that at least.”

Mammy turned to face me, her gnarled fingers balled around the cane’s head, and I felt a pang of guilt. I was old, there was no doubt of that, old in body and spirit. But there was also no denying that Mammy was at least fifteen years my senior.

My earliest recollections were of Mammy, making me dolls, spinning her stories. Stories of the ghosts and spirits that dwelled in the misty bayous. Oddly enough, her tales had never frightened me. I remember those as happy times. Times when anything seemed possible, and life was worth living.

Times before I made the wrong choice.

Swallowing, I turned my face away from the dark eyes that seemed to see too much. “I want to go to bed.”

“ ’Tis early still and you’ve hardly been up more than a bit.”

“I don’t recall asking your opinion,” I snapped. Immediately I regretted my words, but they seemed to have little effect on Mammy. Her stare continued to bore into me. “Won’t you simply allow me to do as I wish this once?”

“Seems to me ye done as ye wished too much.”

My head twisted back and for an instant life sparked through me. A touch of the spirit that had made me at one time the belle of New Orleans society flared. Then sadness veiled my features. “Put me to bed,” I whispered in a voice grown weak and listless.

With no more than a thinning of her lips, Mammy hobbled to the bellrope. The maids she summoned were less than gentle as they lifted me into the large four-postered bed. It was the bed where I was born; where I’d slept alone most of my life. The process of being moved tired me even more. I wanted only to drift off into the netherlands of sleep and oblivion.

“Guess ye know what today is?”

I lifted parchment-thin lids.

“ ’Tis All Hallow’s Eve.”

How could the mention of this day cause such pain after all these years? I shut my eyes before Mammy could see the welling tears. “Go away,” I murmured. “Go away and leave me in peace.”

But there was no peace to be had. Silently I cursed the old woman who reminded me of things better left forgotten. Of my wasted life... of my lost love. But in actuality thoughts of him were never far from my mind... or heart.

Zachary Hamilton.

I met him on All Hallow’s Eve.

All Hallow’s Eve when fate first offered me a taste of what life might be. I remembered the night as if it were yesterday rather than over fifty years ago. It was there in my memory, sealed and cherished. The smell of roses, heady and sensual, the excited laughter of those assembled in the ballroom, the awareness in his dark green eyes when I glanced around and saw him.

I was smiling, laughing at some comment my partner for the quadrille made, when I felt a need to look toward the arched doorway. A need so strong that even now as I lay in the bed that would cradle my body in death, I could feel the tug of his presence. Nothing had ever felt so surreal yet genuine before or since, like a paradox that life thrusts your way.

He stood there, staring at me, tall and so sinfully handsome in his uniform my mouth went suddenly dry.

“No, please.” The words escaped me now on a sob as I tried to push the memory of the man I would always love... the mistake I would always regret from my mind. But it did no good. It never did. As I drifted in and out of a restless sleep his presence followed me. As dreams. As memories. As regrets.

And as it always did the question came, “What if?” What if I would have chosen love over pride, love over selfishness, love over darkness. If I had kept our rendezvous. If I had gone with Zachary? Would my life have meant something? Would I reflect back over the years with emotions other than regret?

But I would never know. For my life was over. And so was his. He’d died in 1816, over a decade after I acquiesced to my parent’s wishes and rejected him. And with word of his death, I lost all hope that someday, somehow, we might find each other in this life.

So now there was nothing. Nothing.
Nothing.
The words beat inside my head like the pounding of drums. Pounding. Pounding.

The sound gave me no rest. I took a shallow breath and smoke tickled my nostrils, forming a heavy fog like the mist drifting over the cypress trees in the swamps. Slowly my eyes opened; my sight, weakened by age, focused.

Countless candles flickered, sending grotesque shadows dancing on the walls. It was night now. At least I thought as much, though I couldn’t grasp how I knew. And there were people in my room. People I didn’t recognize.

Fear pounded through me as incessant as the rhythmic beat of drums. What was happening to me? Turning my head required near all the strength I possessed. My body seemed leaden, weighted down, as if the bayous closed in about me. The air, sweet with a scent I didn’t recognize, was too thick to breathe.

“Help me.” Was that my voice so far away, so disembodied? I opened my mouth to call out again when a hand settled on my cheek.

Mammy. Relief flowed through me like a balm. Mammy would let no harm come to me. Even if she was dressed strangely in a flowing white gown with a red scarf binding her hair, Mammy would keep me safe. It was the one constant of my life.

“What are you doing?” I wasn’t certain if I spoke the question aloud, or if anyone in the room heard me. Certainly there was no response from the men and women dancing about my bed. Or from Mammy. She continued to chant something in a language I couldn’t comprehend. And as her voice droned on, as the hypnotic syllables lulled, I felt myself drifting off the soft down mattress to float above my bed. Above my own form.

Strange.

I wanted to ask Mammy what the words meant. What she was doing with the feathers. Why they were brushed across my forehead, over my eyelids. But my lips could no longer form questions.

I couldn’t even protest when the ornate mantel clock chimed the last of twelve resonant notes and Mammy announced my death. How could I be dead when I could see it all? Hear it all? Yet Mammy made it sound true enough.

“Dead. Eugenie de Valliers is dead. Gone from this world.”

The words quickened the dancers’ frenzied pace. Sweat glistened on their ebony bodies as they swirled about the bed, bare feet pounding the floor.

My body lay cocooned in eiderdown and lace, pale and lifeless, an empty shell like my life. There was no more to be done. With a sigh and a last thought of him, I, Eugenie de Valliers, gave up the ghost.

Two

“I
s ye plannin’ to sleep the day away?”

I moaned, squinting my eyes against the sudden brightness. Outside I heard a cock crow. What was happening? Moments ago all had been peace and welcome dark oblivion. Now a sense of bustling urgency jarred my senses.

I did my best to ignore it.

“Now, Miss Eugenie, there’s no sense pretendin’ ye ain’t under that pile of blankets. I sees that dark hair of yours spillin’ out under the coverlet.”

What was Mammy talking about? My hair had lost its dark color years ago, first turning dull gray, then nearly white before I died.

Died.

My eyes popped open as memories assailed me. I was dead. Finally freed from the unhappy tedium of my life. I remembered the event clearly.

So what was happening now?

Why was my bedroom filled with sunshine? And why could I see Mammy, a much younger-looking Mammy, through the gossamer veil of mosquito netting as she bustled her large-frame about the bedroom?

“Go away and let me rest in peace.”

“Now, Miss Eugenie, I’d do that if I could. Ye know that. But Miz Bernadette says for me to get ye up and ready to go to town.”

Was Mammy daft? I hadn’t been to town in over thirty years. I’d fled to Belle Maison when word reached New Orleans of a British fleet heading toward the city... and stayed after learning of Zachary’s death.

A near physical pain shot through me at the memory. The only man I ever loved was dead, had been for decades, and I wished the same oblivion for myself.

My anger began to simmer, forcing aside unhappy memories. Mammy flit about the room, ignoring my order to leave, supervising the filling of a brass tub, laying out my clothing. As if she actually thought I would rise from my deathbed and ready myself for a trip to town.

And all the while she babbled on about parties and masked balls and which gowns did I wish to take with me. The old woman acted as if time stood still. She even looked as if it had with her body fuller and her voice firm.

It was infuriating.

“Go away, I say. Stop this awful charade.” A sob escaped, a silly, childish sob and I yanked aside the coverlet, throwing my legs over the side of the bed. I slid to the floor, marched toward Mammy and began crying in earnest.

It wasn’t until I was nearly beside her that I stopped. I stared down to where several pink toes peeked from beneath my long cotton gown.

I was standing, nay walking! And my feet had lost the wrinkled rages of age. The shock made me lurch toward Mammy.

“Is ye all right child?” Strong arms wrapped around me.

“What’s wrong with Eugenie?”

Glancing around, scarcely able to believe my eyes, I watched my mother walk into the room. Was she an apparition, a ghostly being sent to haunt me? But no, she appeared real enough. Her usually serene expression was only slightly marred by a thinning of her lips. “She is all right, isn’t she, Mammy?”